THIS. IS. INSANE! The Los Angeles Dodgers have just blown open the history books with a double barrel shotgun as they’ve signed Shohei Ohtani to an unimaginable 10-year, $700M contract to leave their cross-town rival LA Angels.
This is such a crazy contract.
In what has to be the craziest, largest, and perhaps the most insane contract in the history of professional sports, the LA Dodgers have just signed Shohei Ohtani to an incredible 10-year, $700M contract that obviously blows any other record sports deal out of the water. And, I hate to sound like “that guy”, but this is not going to age well.
So, yeah. Here we are.
Not only has Shohei Ohtani crossed city lines and left the Los Angeles Angels for the Los Angeles Dodgers, but he has also now become the highest-paid athlete ever recorded in modern history (sorry, but I couldn’t tell you how much those Ancient Greek Olympians were making back then) with his 10-year, $700M contract with an average annual salary of $70M! Yes, I give you permission to fall out of you seat after reading that line.
Now, Shohei Ohtani is quite clearly the best player in baseball right now by nearly a country mile as he was the AL MVP, earned another Silver Slugger award, was named to the AL All-Star team, had a batting average of .304%, finished 4th in home runs with 44, he hit 98 RBIs, he had a 10-5 pitching record, he had a great 3.14 ERA, he had 167 strikeouts, and he would have most likely have received pitching honors and awards as well before tearing his UCL in his elbow and needing Tommy John surgery to repair it.
Oh, and he did all of this while playing for an Angels team that not only finished last season 4th worst in the AL West (only the Oakland Athletics were worse than them in the division) and had a 73-89 record, but they also missed the playoffs for the 9th straight season.
Simply put, the Angels SUCKED for every single season Ohtani was there, and it is really incredible he was able to win 2 MVPs, 2 Silver Sluggers, 3 All-Star nods, the 2018 AL Rookie of the Year, and produce all of his great stats. And that’s why the Dodgers are now paying him $700M to play for the blue side (or more like the 95% side) of LA!
But, like I said, I have a bad feeling this isn’t going to turn out well for the Dodgers and maybe even baseball itself.
Obviously, the Dodgers are free to pay whatever they want for Ohtani and I’m completely behind them choosing to dish out $700M, even though I find the idea to be CRAZY that anyone can make nearly $1B from just throwing and hitting a ball, but does anyone really know if Ohtani will be able to pitch at an All-Star level when he returns from his injury?
Sure, Tommy John surgery is no longer the career-ending affair that it once was, but it’s still a little risky to pay a guy nearly 3/4ths of a billion dollars and essentially hope he will be able to pitch at a high level again. And I do hope they have factored in his pitching ability and availability when creating this deal or else Ohtani should have gotten a contract similar to Aaron Judge’s $360M.
Nevertheless, as for my other concern about the ramifications of this deal, I really hope this doesn’t push baseball into a massive lockout fight over player salaries and salary cap concerns. I don’t want to sound like Ebenezer Scrooge here but paying someone $700M is going to inflate the baseball market by tenfold whenever the next great player comes up for a new deal.
And can the league really justify paying $1b for a player hitting baseball? I mean, just putting aside the fact that paying players $1B to hit a ball is about as relatable to a 9-5, $60k/year construction worker or office salesman, who make up the majority of the MLB’s fanbase, there’s literally going to be only 4-5 teams who can actually win the World Series ever year if the salaries continue to rise to this extremely inflated level.
I’m really happy for Ohtani and I’m glad he has made such a lucrative and fantastic deal for himself with the Dodgers, but the MLB really needs to start looking at salary caps as this is getting a little crazy. And especially so as the MLB’s relevance grows ever weaker by the year.
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